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Kanye West

locationParis, 6 March 2012

locationParis, 6 March 2012

IF you’re a brilliant and successful, world renowned painter, why try your hand at being a famous singer, at least until you’ve learned how to do it well enough to justify surrounding yourself with all the pomp, ceremony, dry ice and flashing lights of a true rock legend?

With <a href=" www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/designer/kanye-west " target="”_blank”">Kanye West’s second show tonight, the cart before the horse expression is apt again. Yes there were celebrities – P. Diddy, the Kardashians and Alicia Keys made getting into the show – running late and scheduled for 9.30pm too far on the wrong side of Paris – a nightmare worthy of a must-see, unmissable show, but placed as it was on the same day as such fashion higher powers as <a href=" www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/autumn-winter-2012/ready-to-wear/chanel/full-length-photos" target="”_blank”">Chanel, <a href="http://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/autumn-winter-2012/ready-to-wear/alexander-mcqueen/full-length-photos " target="”_blank”">McQueen and <a href="http://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/autumn-winter-2012/ready-to-wear/valentino/full-length-photos" target="”_blank”">Valentino – and before <a href=" www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/designer/louis-vuitton" target="”_blank”">Louis Vuitton and <a href=" www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/designer/miu-miu" target="”_blank”">Miu Miu in the morning - it felt like an odd sort of joke.

Was it better than last season? In that the clothes weren’t ill-fitting enough to fall off the models in the same way, yes. It had leather trousers and fur gilets, stretchy sheer dresses with panels of crocodile, biker jackets (backless) and tight pencil skirts with curvy hemlines, big sweatshirts - one in cable knit silver that actually looked like something new – and knee high stiletto boots that buckled all the way up. Another peach cashmere dress had a cape back and a deep dip in the front that the model had to hold together herself. One onlooker (who I shouldn’t quote by name without permission), shrugged his shoulders and said it was like something like Alexander Wang might show. It was – in a seen-it-all-before, this-would-be-OK-in-New-York way. And with Wang there’s an idea that caters to an established fan base of people who wear the clothes. Here there were just clothes.

This is Paris and it’s tempting to be vitriolic about West’s audacity in coming here to mix with the big guns. After last season we felt it was hardly worth going to his show this time, such a foregone conclusion it was assumed to be. Then there were rumours of headline acts, of Alicia singing live and we all came along hoping that, after rumours that he’d fired his entire team after the press slating last season, and then hired one or two of them back (London designer Katie Eary among them if the rumour mill is to be believed), in true diva style, his wild enthusiasm for fashion might show itself in his clothes.

But there was no live show, and there were no new ideas. There were some go carts that whizzed around the catwalk at the end making a big whizzy noise, there were supermodels in the shape of Carmen Kass, Jourdan Dunn and Joan Smalls who looked lovely in Kanye’s clothes – but when don’t they? – there was Champagne and paparazzi. All the trimmings but without the substance – yet – like a boy playing at being a big fashion designer. Is it that Kanye is surrounded by yes men who won’t suggest he sticks to his – undoubtedly brilliant – day job? Or is it that he’s still learning? Or are we simply too mean to allow a man success in two fields?

<a href="http://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/designer/kanye-west" target="”_blank”">SEE THE KANYE WEST SHOW ARCHIVE